Noem coordinates with Mississippi officials as state recovers from deadly winter storm
The total national death toll from Winter Storm Fern has risen to 85 as additional storms are expected to make landfall in the U.S. over the coming weeks.
Mississippi took one of the hardest hits from the storm, with 23 killed in the Magnolia State, and tens of thousands still without power.
Despite the storm heading north several days ago, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves says while the state has seen many improvements, there is still work to be done and hundreds of thousands of Americans remain without power across the country.
"There's no doubt that Mississippi got hit hard in this ice storm and ice is unlike anything we've ever seen before," Reeves told Fox News Digital, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined him in visiting a Mississippi National Guard facility in Tupelo, Miss.
"We appreciate the fact that she understands that these disasters are state-managed, locally executed, and federally supported," the governor said. "I will tell you the team at FEMA has been integrated with our team at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency since the very beginning of this storm and when we need assets they have delivered, and I am very thankful for that."
Noem told Fox News Digital she thought FEMA did "a great job."
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"We did a great job with the National Weather Service and NOAA predicting the storm," Noem told Fox News Digital during the visit. "And giving us some time to get generators here ahead of time, get people in place. But it's been incredible today to hear the stories of what worked."
Noem and President Donald Trump have both criticized the emergency disaster assistance agency in the past, with Noem saying she wanted to "get rid of FEMA as it is today."
When asked about how FEMA has changed under her watch, Noem pointed to her implementation of a block grant system, which allows the agency to disperse aid to states ahead of disasters, allowing individual states to hire contractors for preparation and recovery.
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"There's a lot within FEMA that is written in statute, it's in law, what it does," Noem explained to Fox News Digital. "But we cut the paperwork and cut the bureaucracy of it. Immediately now, when there's a disaster that's coming, we pre-deploy people and dollars to that state in a block grant so they can go out, and they can hire contractors to help their neighbors."
Last June, Trump indicated that the administration would "wean off of FEMA," after hurricane season ended last year. By using a block grant system, the current version of FEMA does allow states to make decisions on which contractors to use and gives state leaders the opportunity to decide how to best equip their states with the resources they need.
Cities across the country are still dealing with the fallout resulting from winter storm damage and cold weather continues to linger.
FOX Weather reported a major disruption to the Polar Vortex is coming in February, which would allow freezing arctic air to seep into the eastern U.S.